Unofficial news and tips about Google

January 10, 2012

Google Body Browser Is Now Zygote Body

Body Browser is one of the many products that was discontinued when Google closed Google Labs. The good news is that the service is now back online and it's hosted by Zygote, the company that provided the imagery for Google Body Browser. Zygote Body looks almost the same, still requires a browser that supports WebGL (Chrome or Firefox), but the site is very slow.

Body Browser started as a project built by Google engineers in their "20 percent time" and it was a great way to promote Chrome's support for WebGL, an API that allows Web apps to generate interactive 3D graphics without using additional plugins. The app also worked in Firefox and it was ported to Android Honeycomb. There's no Android app for Zygote Body right now, but the company promises to release one in the future.

Zygote Body uses an open source 3D viewer developed by Google. "This viewer provides a standard way to create and view 3D models in a Web browser, with multiple layers and instant search," explains Google.